Graduation Photos

I received an advertisement in my mailbox the other day. It was an offer from a photography company, telling me that for only (insert preposterous amount of money here), I could buy a framed photograph of myself shaking hands with Bobby B at graduation, receiving my empty diploma case, and making the headlong leap into “life after undergrad.” After snorting and throwing the paper into the recycling, my second response was to laugh at the thought of how ridiculous my face would probably look. I’d most likely have an expression of bewildered shock, similar to the one I had when I was baptized as an infant, which probably reads something like, “What did I do to deserve this?”

Now that I think of it, “graduation action-shot” photos sound a lot to me like those pictures they take on roller coasters at whatever point the engineers have decided is the scariest one of the whole ride, the place most likely to yield awkward or hilarious facial expressions. They couldn’t pick a more awkward time to take pictures of college grads, I’m sure. Imagine the expression of someone who is just leaving the womb of pre-paid rent and perpetual slumber parties, someone who has realized for the first time that life doesn’t take three months off for the summer, someone who is terribly afraid that she will never find a job that she wakes up excited about. Now stuff her in a polyester graduation gown, stick a categorically unattractive cap thingy on her head, and *snap* you’ve got a Kodak moment she’ll want to treasure forever. Right.

No, I’d rather have a picture of me camping out on Caf Lane with my friends, five of us squashed together in my three person tent, our mouths wide with shock as jets of water from the sprinklers spear the thin material and wake us at four in the morning. Or a snapshot of me hunting on the beach below Young Hall for beach glass and interesting shells, seaweed wrapped around my neck like a string of slimy green pearls. Or maybe a picture of my roommates and me in our living room, dressed in hideous sweaters for the Flex 45 H first (and last) annual Christmas Gala. Perhaps a photo of me peeking my head into Dr. Lodahl’s office, as I do every time I see his door open, just to say hello. Maybe me wandering past the crowded international line with a half-eaten cookie in either hand, me serving communion to the student body in chapel, me on the stage of Crill with tears glistening in my eyes as I sign the words to “The Lord Bless You and Keep You.”

With only eleven days until graduation, the end is fully in sight, and I’m most assuredly ready to fly the coop and take on the great wide world. I’ve got dreams, I’ve got plans…and heck, I’m going to be a camp counselor this summer! But I’ve decided that the picture I want framed in my memory is not one of me getting my money’s worth out of my college education. To conclude my college experience looking only toward the future without taking careful stock of everything Point Loma has been to me, or to leave without genuinely mourning what a loss it will be to leave this family, would be nothing short of greedy. Take ol’ PLNU for all she’s worth, and jet out? I don’t think so.

Before I graduate, I plan to spend an afternoon walking the campus, remembering, laughing, probably crying, and most definitely praying: for those who are leaving, for those who remain, and for those who are yet to come.

A song of simplicity

"One thing God has spoken, two things have I heard:
that you, O God, are strong, and that you, O Lord, are loving."

Psalm 62:11-12

Grant us your love, oh God, that we would see your face in all Creation,
and grant us your strength, that Creation would see your face in us.

Where we are ascending from...

How hard to believe that we are still in just the beginning stages of this tragedy... We're still trying to figure out what even happened - rumors are flying and people are still numb with shock. People close to me are still finding out for the first time that there was a school shooting at Virginia Tech. This is the “before”: Before the in-depth police reports have been issued. Before the South Korean-hate groups are started by people who want someone to blame. Before we feel comfortable admitting that in our very darkest moments, we too are violent and hateful and capable of murder.

It's painful to imagine what the “after” will look like: the time when the flowers left at the site of the shooting are all decayed and swept away, when this will be yet another reason for heightened airport security and tighter gun control. The days after songs are played on the radio about the lives of the students who died and how heroic they were, and after the committees are formed to revise their school's emergency plan in case other students decide to try the same stunt.... how long until the authors make their thousands of dollars writing bestsellers about what turned this unsuspecting student into a deranged maniac who locked his classmates in a building and brutally murdered thirty three of them, taking his own life in the process?

And what beyond that? Is it foolish to look forward to a time when news of a mass murder is no longer passé? Can we really expect that someday there will be triumph over the power of darkness that so adamantly tries to drown us in grief? Can we even dare to dream of a world beyond bloodshed and alienation?

Sometimes I wonder at myself for saying yes, that there is a Prince of Peace and he is coming again to restore Creation, yes he will judge the living and the dead, and yes his Kingdom will have no end. I am baffled by this fire in my bones that fiercely refuses to cave in to despair. What reason have I to respond to this tale of violence with a refusal to beget more violence? Why can I dream only of healing these wounds with love?

“And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.” Romans 5:5

"you put stones in the pocket of Quiet, to give it weight."

Today's lesson:

"It ain't that easy, but it ain't that hard... We just love with more love and we do the best we can."
- lyrics from a song by Wes Wilkes, a member of the recovery program at San Diego Rescue Mission. He gets it.

"Revelations"

Is the bible a book? Perhaps the answer depends on who is being asked. Tevye, a stout Jewish father in the musical “Fiddler on the Roof,” called the “the Good Book,” although he was referring just to the Tanakh, and he did habitually attribute his own enigmatic axioms to the wise authors of said book. (No Christians I know could ever be accused of such behavior…ahem.) On the other hand, James E. Bowley, referring to the same collection of Hebrew scriptures, makes his opposing opinion quite clear in his newly released Introduction to Hebrew Bible: A Guided Tour of Israel's Sacred Library. There he says plain as pie, “The Bible is Not a Book.” (It is a shame that entry 5 in the American Heritage Dictionary’s definition of “book” is wrong, in that case: 5. Book. The Bible. They’ll have to go back and fix that.)

One may ask, at this point, what kind of book we are referring to. No one would contest, to be sure, that the Bible is a “set of written, printed, or blank pages fastened along one side and encased between protective covers.” Nor is it a stretch to say definitively that the Bible is a “printed or written literary work,” or even that it is “regarded as a source of knowledge or understanding.” The real contention, the one that the esteemed Mr. Bowley is addressing, is whether the Bible composes a cohesive narrative or simply a collection of historical, literary, and moral documents. As noted before, Bowley is referring to the Hebrew scriptures, and to discuss whether or not those form a narrative is a topic for another day and another paper. For the sake of this discussion, we’ll pretend he was referring to the Christian bible, both Old and New Testaments, an assumption which will make this paper a much more lively and applicable endeavor.

Actually, the only Bible I know of that truly fits Bowley’s description is the one I have in my kitchen: the Pie and Pastry Bible. This massive volume contains recipes for every pastry delight known to Western Civilization, each of which contain more calories than a Jewish bagel shop. This “bible” was compiled by a renowned chef, Rose Levy Beranbaum, and according to followers of her confectionary cult, “The Pie and Pastry Bible is not just a bible. It's a textbook. An encyclopedia. She not only tells you what to do, but why you should do it. It requires concentration and careful reading. But if you follow her instructions, I promise that you'll bake some marvelous creations, as well as overcome many of the obstacles that home bakers face.”

From the titles, it’s relatively simple to see the difference between the Pie and Pastry Bible and the Holy Bible: one is intended for cooking, and one for establishing religious narrative. Once they are opened and used, however, it can become tricky to tell which is intended for which purpose. If both are viewed as collections of relevant material, as Bowley would prefer, then these bibles look remarkably similar – Unified compilations, divided into thematically linked sub-books of groups that contain individual recipes for “marvelous creations” and ways to “overcome many obstacles.” Pick any section you like - skip around even! Just throw in the required ingredients, and the result is a feel-good crowd pleaser. If by chance it doesn’t please the crowd, simply throw that recipe out and move on to the next one!

It seems clear to me that reading the Holy Bible like a cookbook, as the “basic instructions before leaving earth,” is as backward as reading the Pie and Pastry Bible as the foundation for a religious narrative. Unmistakably, there are major differences between the two, the most pivotal of which is the fact that while the Pie and Pastry Bible does not (and should not) have a plot, the Holy Bible very much does have, and ought to be read in light of, an overarching and underpinning fabula of the interactions between the Creator and Creation.

There are two ways to re-view the Bible, or better, two perspectives, both of which are essential to understanding its complete structure. An accurate understanding of Scripture emerges from an understanding of its deep structure – the progression of the story of creation to the redemption of creation to the perfection of creation. Such an understanding can only be gained, however, in carefully taking in the Bible’s surface structure: interwoven stories of nations and churches and individuals, multi-narratives complete with foreshadowing, irony, symbolism, allegory, and metaphor, literary elements no good story is without. These elements are the source of the Bible’s deep structure. They help us understand that the Bible is a story – plot emerges, and conflict, and tension.

Thus, we see that the Bible is indeed a book – a story that opens with a poetic hymn of creation, and closes with a similarly artistic rendering of the culmination of creation. A visiting lecturer to Point Loma’s campus once highlighted the Christian paradox of being “caught between the already and the not yet.” We have our beginning, and we have our ending. Our burden is finding the way to get from one to the other, deciding what to do with the chapters that have already been written, and those that are still germinating.

The truth is, we Christians are in an ironic pickle – we are characters in story whose ending has been written before the story itself is finished, and I think it’s fair to say this sometimes leaves us with a vague feeling of disappointment at having spoiled our own ending. Furthermore, most of what we know about the eschaton is found in a nicely imaginative but irritatingly frivolous apocalyptic vision in the last chapter of the bible. We don’t know exactly how it’s getting here, when, or what it will look like when it comes – I myself make no concrete claims about the coming kingdom except that it’s coming! Thankfully, the content of the plot from now to the Apocalypse promises to be tremendously exciting if it is anything like the previous chapters, plus we have a host of already written stories that still need to be re-told and re-examined if we are to have any hope of learning from our mistakes and being faithful in the events to come.

Jacob's Ladder - please comment

Please share your thoughts on the story below - it is a work in progress...and the more I read it the more I revile it. So if you hate it too, please tell my why, so I can justify throwing it in the garbage. If you don't hate it, please tell me why, so I can toss and turn at night wondering why I hate this story so much.

Sorry - I'm really not so dramatic as all this, it's just that my roommate watched a Hilary Duff movie tonight, and I think Hilary's aura has infected my apartment. Ghostbusters is my only hope!

Jacob's Ladder

Jacob stared at the spotless patch of carpet where the Playstation used to be – a crushed section of pale blue that stood out pretentiously from its dingy bruise-colored surroundings, a sneering square of celestial purity. He heaved an aggravated sigh, cursed his uncle, and returned his sullen gaze to the television screen, where Steve Irwin was holding the tail of some fanged snake, going on and on about how perfectly safe he was. Jacob stifled a snigger – if Steve Irwin knew so much about handling danger, how come he was dead?

Dead. His stomach knotted as the word pulsed hollowly through his brain. He’d forgotten for a second and now the reality of what happened two weeks ago stormed him again. It really wasn’t Jacob’s fault, though. True, he hadn’t been at his station, but he’d spilled a full bag of Skittles all over the deck, and was trying to salvage them from the warm puddles of chlorine water threatening to dissolve them into a bleeding rainbow of sugar. He didn’t notice the spidery girl clinging desperately to her pink arm floatie, straining to keep her lips above the water. She had probably cried, bug-eyed, for help, but her thin protest was submerged in the roar of the pool’s other occupants, swarms of children all clamoring for attention, all desperate to be noticed. There was no way for her small brown voice to rise above the boisterous Tennessee vigor that crowded the pool alongside inner tubes and melting sunscreen and abandoned goggles. The other children paid no attention, but who could blame them? It’s just that children don’t understand death, Jacob reasoned. They just don’t have time for it.

Jacob himself hardly believed in death, for all those videos he was made to watch about first aid during lifeguard training. Glass stabbed in people’s toes, bloody gashes in suspiciously kosher locations: Why were these people always getting cut in the least interesting places? The forearms and knees are so third grade; he thought someone should make a video in which someone’s gut was flayed open, or their ear chopped off. Real emergencies looked more like what happened in the arcade games he played in the lobby of the hotel where his mother worked – digital bodies peppered with bullets lining the streets, digital blood spraying the windshields of digital cars – Jacob would try to shoot mostly bad guys, but occasionally an innocent bystander or two would go down, and he would smirk even as he winced at the anguished digital moans of the dying. After all, the fact of life is that you win some, you lose some. Life is about avoiding as much bad stuff as possible, and trying to enjoy the good. And that afternoon at the pool, Jacob had concentrated intently on the good: scurrying across the rough cement, scooping up clumps of drowning candies and adding them in great handfuls of strawberry, orange, and lemon to his already stuffed mouth.

Now he would swear off candy altogether if it would do anything to appease the hurricane of emotion that was ravaging the town. Already two weeks since that little girl died, and he was still hiding at his uncle’s ranch to avoid being mobbed by gangs of angry parents, angry bosses, angry town officials, angry friends. Even his dumpy old bachelor uncle was angry, and had punished him by taking the Playstation, the mini-fridge, and the computer out of the old barn where Jacob was now forced to pass his days watching idiot snake-handlers petting the bellies of poisonous vipers. Jacob’s legs jigged with pent up frustration. He was terribly antsy to get back to the arcade, but the thought of another interrogation by his boss made him weak with anxiety. With an air of heavy resignation Jacob left his place on the couch and shuffled to his bedroom to hunt for something to take the edge off his misery and confinement. He remembered he’d stashed some candy in his bedroom when he’d first arrived, but now he couldn’t remember where he’d hid it, or even if there was any left.

Jacob made his way past the plaster Indian Chief who stared accusingly from under his lampshade on the bedside table, and came to the looming dresser, which hunched like a gargoyle above the rest of his uncle’s garage sale furniture. He leaned toward the grainy mirror that hung above it reflecting the cavernous room, and saw a pale and dowdy zombie looming toward him with desperation written on its face. This was pathetic. Jacob turned from his reflection and gave an irritated yank on the top drawer. It had rained earlier in the week, and the badly insulated back room had gotten damp, so all the wood was swollen and groaned and creaked like some second-rate horror flick. He began with the top drawer - lighters, change, bottle caps, receipts, empty cigarette packs. Next were socks and rumpled underwear, then a drawer that should’ve held jeans but was empty because he hadn’t gotten around to doing laundry, now T-shirts and some dirty magazines hidden underneath. He looked resignedly at the bottom drawer – it was heavy, maybe off its tracks. Jacob tugged and the whole bureau tipped forward with a shudder.

He heard Skittles scattering inside, and a fat bead of drool eased onto his lower lip as he anticipated the comforting sweetness inside. He braced one hand against the bureau, gripped the drawer’s dirty bronze handle with the other, and roughly yanked until he could just barely shove his hand inside the opening. He squeezed his arm into the drawer’s musty darkness, congratulating himself on having found his hidden stash.

Before he reached it, however, a sudden and agonizingly rude pain between his ring finger and pinky finger caused Jacob to scream and jerk his hand toward himself, only to find it stuck in the narrow opening. He tried in vain to take his hand out, but was too shocked by pain and fright to relax his muscles enough to pull free. A second time he felt a sharp stabbing, this time in his fleshy middle finger. He began to shriek in panic, desperately begging for someone to help, but he knew even as he shouted that it was in vain: his uncle wouldn’t be home till six.

Great swirling waves of numbness pitched Jacob to the floor, and the dark walls whirled around him like towels in a dryer. His fingers scrabbled at the matted carpet as he wheezed through his rapidly tightening throat… now his swollen tongue was making it impossible for him to breathe, let alone call for help. He gasped against the oppressive tide of nausea that swept over him, staring helplessly at the plaster Indian Chief, who leered back down at him. Jacob would not blink – he locked his eyes in a staring contest with the Chief. The light bulb protruding from the Chief’s headdress zoomed into close focus, now shot up into the farthest corner of the room, now approached again, slowly growing brighter. Jacob’s eyes burned as he gazed fixedly at the vision of hot glowing wires that grew waveringly larger. A fat tear slid to his chin. His lips contorted into a silent infant wail as his eyes finally grew accustomed to the harsh light. Jacob tasted something sweet.

"An essay on grunions, written entirely in octameter." Or, "sometimes Google sucks."

I went to see the grunions run, but naught a grunion ran tonight. The chase was staged with company – a friend I’d met at camp, and Ro, the guy she’d met through me albeit by accident, I’ll have you know. At half past twelve we three joined up at Champs, a seedy local bar, and Jo and Ro and me, of course, piled in my car and drove to shore. We landed at an empty beach, I parked my car in a red zone. We all piled out, cameras in tow, to watch the frenzied mating start. A thousand fishes, more or less, would come on shore to dig and spawn, and pickings would be plentiful, we’d heard, but all the fish were GONE! I scoured the sand both high and low, but gulls and terns were all I found. NO fish were present, I’ll be darned! The internet was wrong this time! It turns out Google’s full of dung, and grunions had the final laugh!!

Mirrors and Smoke

The stage is set with a door separating two rooms. One is dark, with barred windows and one tiny fan. It is lined with electrical cords and bobbins, and there are two women seated there. The other room is open, breezy, and fashionably decorated. It contains a rack of expensive clothes, and there are two women shopping there.

Characters:
Emily
Jen
Graciela
Lupe

Scene one: (Lights fade on amidst background chatter)

Emily: I told you, Jen, it’s totally worth the drive up here from San Diego. I saw this shirt for $70 at Fashion Valley, and here it’s only $30!

Jen: I would NEVER spend 70 bucks on a shirt - 30 seems bad enough! Clothes are so expensive these days – Especially like this one, “Made in the USA.” (shows Emily the label) I really try to buy stuff made in America so I’m supporting the U.S. economy, but you know U.S. workers have to make minimum wage, which of course makes the price go up.

Emily: Minimum wage, ha. Minimum for what? I make minimum wage at school, and I can barely afford to eat out 3 times a week. I have to drive all the way up here to shop for anything cute, because if I try to buy it in San Diego it costs an arm and a leg! I wish they would pay us enough to actually live on. I could work 40 hours a week and still not make enough to rent a shack in OB. Good thing I get to live on campus for two more years!

Scene two: (Silence, other than the humming of machines)

Graciela: Hand me another “made in the USA” label, Lupe.
Lupe: Did Raul say whether or not we were going to get paid tomorrow?
Graciela: I asked him three times yesterday and twice today, but he still won’t answer me. I can’t wait another week, though. I ran out of rice two days ago, and you know the kids can’t get free lunch on the weekends.
Lupe: (coughing) Ha, I remember I always looked forward to Mondays when I was little, because the school had chimichangas for lunch. (Coughing harder) I wish Raul hadn’t welded the windows shut –I need some air – my face is so hot!
Graciela: Are you getting sick, Lupe?
Lupe: I hope to God no – it makes the days go by so slowly when my head hurts as well as my back. Last time I got sick it stayed for two months before Raul finally gave me an afternoon to go to the doctor.
Graciela: It’s not me I’m worried about so much as my kids: if I get them sick and they can’t go to school, they’ll have to come to the factory with me since my mom can’t take care of them anymore.
Lupe: So? When I was Maria’s age, I was already working in the factory. You should bring her here after school, at least, and have her help you with some pieces.
Graciela: No, I want her to have at least a few more years of childhood. It’s hard enough living with so many people in one place on $150 a week – I want her to be able to have some space at school.
Lupe: Hey, you know as well as I do that 10 cents per shirt doesn’t go a long way, and from what I hear about the rent going up in your neighborhood, you are going to need as much help as you can get, Graciela.
Graciela: These shirts need to go down, but Raul is going to kill me if he sees me down there.
Lupe: I’ll bring them down. You have your mom and the baby to think of. (picks up a pile of shirts, walks quickly to the door, looking around, and opens it. Lupe looks around to make sure no one sees her, and hurries to set down the shirts. She turns around to leave, when she bumps into Jen. Lupe casts her eyes down in humiliation, Jen’s eyes widen with shock. Freeze... Lights fade.)

Lenten Reflections

Every Monday morning I leave my home in Point Loma at 7:45 to drive to my church in Mira Mesa for a staff meeting that starts at 8:30. It ends at 8:50. Then I drive back to school. It’s absurd...spending 45 minutes driving to a meeting that lasts 20 minutes long is ludicrous! It used to get my goat like no other, but I realized one day that having one's goat gotten first thing every Monday morning is not a good way to start the week, so I decided to surrender that time to God. And I tell you the truth, I look forward to that commute now, because God shows up every time, without fail. On more than one occasion, I have driven home with tears of gratitude streaming down my face, and the prayers I offer during that time are some of the most heartfelt and holy words I've ever spoken. Making space for God is a good thing.

Consider The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector, found in Luke 18:9-14:

"To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.'

"But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.' "I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."

The prayer of the tax collector, which is the same one the desert monastics used to repeat over and over again in their desire to "pray without ceasing," is the perfect example of making space for God. I don't think the crux of this passage is the breast beating and utter misery of the tax collector - rather I think it is the space his prayer makes for God's grace to have its way in his life.

We are in the season of Lent right now, which has a lot to do with space-making. This is such a spiritually rich and poignant time of year for me: taking steps to replace my Pharisaiacal self-confidence with humble awareness of the gaping sins in my own life. In Lent, I acknowledge the pits and potholes that I fall into over and over and over again, and wait in humble anticipation and reverence for the deluge of grace that flows from Christ's hands and feet on Good Friday...the grace that is completed in the glory of the resurrection on Easter Sunday. This grace, like rain, falls from heaven and pools in our deepest pits, those we have uncovered in our search for sacred space.

"Lord, as we search for you may we indeed find you, and may the world find you as well, in the love that flows from the cross, and that binds us together as family. I pray for these my brothers and sisters - may the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, oh Lord our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen."

The Light of Ohr Shalom

I’ve had remarkably diverse religious experiences this semester, including visits to a Hare Krishna temple and a Buddhist temple, attending church services at multiple denominations, and since last semester, going to synagogue some Saturday mornings at Ohr Shalom. Reflecting on these various experiences enriched my own spiritual understanding and I’ve resonated with certain ideas everywhere I’ve gone. On every occasion, I’ve come across unexpected similarities between my own faith community and the ones I’ve sort of voyeuristically inserted myself into. My favorite of these similarities: announcements. Ah, that single uniting factor that spans race and age, belief and background. Every religious group has its own culture of announcements, and of all the ones I’ve observed, the announcements at Ohr Shalom are the most endearing, the most welcoming, and the most family-like.

From week to week, the announcements may include a mention of who sponsored the luncheon after the service, a mention of which Jewish holiday is approaching and when the signups for the feast are, whose baby has been born and whose kid has graduated, and where the next service project is taking place. All of this culminates with an invitation for all the guests and newcomers to stand up and say where they are from, and a little bit about themselves. This Saturday was my third time attending shul, and I finally felt that I could legitimately stay seated when the rabbi asked all the newcomers to stand. It was a good feeling, and not because I hate standing up in the middle of a church service, trying to decide whether I’m from Norco, where my dad lives, or Riverside, where my mom lives, all the while hoping my skirt isn’t tucked into my underwear. It’s because I really like the thought of becoming a regular part of the Ohr Shalom community. The other day, in fact, I was telling someone, “I think I’m a closet Jew, except that I really love Jesus a whole lot.” I’m not going to get into the theological framework behind that statement, or try to analyze it for its lack of political correctness, because what I really want to convey is my conviction that the community at Ohr Shalom has a much better grasp on what it is to participate in the story of G-D than do many Christian communities I’ve been a part of.

I suppose the Jews have something of a leg up on Christians when it comes to communing with God, since they do speak the same language as G-D does. J And when I say they speak the same language, I really mean speak so fast that I can hardly follow along, much less read aloud with everyone else. I had the distinct feeling that all my hard work in Hebrew 1 and 2 was naught when compared to the 14 year old girl who was reading from the prayer book with perfect inflection and such rapidity that I just stared blankly at the page and listened. Not to say that I regret taking the class, because I’m convinced that someday I’ll be able to read along and in the meantime, I can pick out words here and there just so I can at least stay on the right page. I do get some satisfaction, too, from being able to read the banners and decorations hanging around the interior of the synagogue and the prayers hung in the bathrooms.

Language barriers aside, there are a number of elements to the Jewish service that I would love to see my church family adopt. First and foremost is a much enhanced sense of reverence for all things concerning G-D. The rituals, the yarmulkes, refraining from speaking the divine name, the long (and I mean LONG) prayers, the standing up and sitting down at prescribed times…all of these contribute to a sense of longstanding tradition that my own community is sorely lacking. I think it’s safe to assume that part of that is due to the fact that, yes, Judaism has been around for several thousand more years than Christianity, but I think Christianity, and specifically the Protestant factions of such, has done a great disservice to itself by ignoring what rich traditions are available to us: patterns for worship and repentance that are prescribed in the very texts that Jesus himself lived by.

That essentially cavalier attitude toward Scripture that trademarks many Protestant circles is, to say the least, not an option in the Jewish tradition. The Christian habit of treating Scripture as nice quotes somebody said, or using it as a sermon illustration rather than the sermon itself, is unheard of; instead, the entire service is structured around the reading of the Torah. And here, the readings include every last bit of Torah, even down to the tedious descriptions of how the ark is to be decorated. Each Sabbath, members of the congregation go up and pray over each section of scripture before it is read, and everyone in the room reads along closely to make sure that the words are read correctly. If the reader makes a mistake, even a minute syllable, someone in the audience is sure to call out a correction. It sounds tiresome, but there is so much reverence and awe for the divine role of scripture, and so much God-infused freshness and newness that permeates what could easily be old-hat routine by now, that even readings about the types of metal that are to be used in manufacturing the temple walls take on an air of majesty and mystery.

All this is helped, too, by the fact that every time the Torah is taken from the place of honor, befitted with tassels and silver trimmings, and taken for a joyful parade around the synagogue, children come running behind it with baskets full of chocolates and candies for everyone in the service to share. Now here is a tradition that I’d like to see instated in my church, and not just because I love Snickers. Really, the reason it is such a beautiful ritual is because, as the rabbi explained to us afterward, the Torah is meant to be sweet on our lips and on our tongues, and sharing candy before and after the Torah readings cultivates an awareness that reading the words on the scrolls is to be as delightful and as treasured as a Reese’s in the middle of shul. The thought and intricacy in this symbolism is profound, and it parallels the honor given to the Torah in all other aspects of Jewish life, i.e. studying and memorizing it from a young age, reading Torah as a faith community, etc. Looking at the tradition from a psychological perspective is interesting as well, as giving out chocolate at a specified time during the service would eventually elicit a Skinnerian response in the congregants, who are now conditioned via positive reinforcement to look forward to the Torah reading, as I found to be the case in my own experience on Saturday. I was fairly drooling by the time the Torah scroll was taken out of the paneled room behind the podium!

So much of Jewish culture speaks directly to my hunger for tradition and symbolism and intelligent discussion. Take, for example, the luncheon served after the service, for example, and the rituals that accompany it. Everyone receives a little cup of juice, wine, or Jack Daniels (hello, Nazarenes?) and sings a prayer together before drinking as a group. Aside from the whiskey option, which seems like a great one in my opinion, the similarity to my church’s communion service is remarkable. After the wine everyone follows a prescribed method for washing their hands while saying a prayer. This hand washing has been going on for centuries, and is actually part of the reason why the Jews didn’t catch the Black Plague so many centuries ago (Silly Christians, we thought the Jews were possessed by Satan-spirits – maybe we should have adopted their cleaning habits rather than kill them). The hand washing is followed by the ritual of breaking the Challah bread, sprinkling it with salt, and passing it around for everyone to share.

Now, I love the high-church feel of the worship service, and I do get a kick out of the Torah treats, but my favorite part of attending shul is by far the conversation around the lunch table. Every time I go I learn something profound about the nature of G-D or about human history, or about literature or sociology, all just in casual banter over bagels and lox. Last week, for example, I talked with a gentleman and his wife about their life history and childhood experiences. He told about going to bed hungry many nights, and about how his mother frequently sacrificed her dinner to feed her sons. He then laughingly remarked that his job now is to keep his wife happy, and when I asked her if he did a good job of that, she smiled and said wryly, “No, he is terrible at it.” Later, the conversation took on a serious note as he began to tell of his experiences in World War two, and how most of his family did not survive. Finally, he asked us if we had ever seen one of the tattoos that people got on their arms in the concentration camps, and when we said No, we hadn’t, he pulled up his sleeve to reveal a bar of black letters and numbers. We sat in stunned silence for a few minutes, taking in the realization that he will bear that mark for the rest of his life. Praise G-D he no longer wears it as a stigmata branding him as something less than human. It is now a symbol of his survival, of his faithfulness even in persecution, and perhaps even a physical reminder of G-D’s faithfulness to G-D’s people.

As I sat at the round table shredding my napkin and looking around at the kind souls gathered all around me, joyfully eating and laughing together, joking that they don’t take G-D so seriously and he doesn’t take them all that seriously either, I had the distinct feeling of being very young and very shallow. I am a dandelion in the wind compared to these vast oaks who have been in the world for such a long time, putting their roots deep down into the soil of their faith, relying on G-D and each other to help them weather storms of maltreatment and trial. My prayer now is that I may sink my roots into the same soil, and watch my faith flower alongside theirs.